September 23, 2013: Everyone now knows that the Central Subway is and always has been a weak project, doggedly promoted for foolish reasons. However, the plan to remove the used-up tunnel boring machines (TBM’s) through a large hole located 2,000 feet north of the end of the subway at the site of the old Pagoda Theater pushes things to new extremes.

The SFMTA (the agency running Muni) insists that it must spend an extra $80 million in this unneeded tunneling and hole-digging for the sole purpose of “saving” two TBM’s worth a total of $4.5 million. Does that make sense?

If this cockamamy plan goes through, it will reportedly be the first time in history that a tunnel anywhere in the world has been extended substantially beyond the end of a subway in order to recover used-up tunnel boring equipment. Elsewhere tunnelers either disassemble the machines and back them out the way they came in, or bury them in an out-of-the-way place (in this case under Jackson Street)

Over the past year numerous individuals and groups have tried to get the SFMTA to explain why it wants to dig a huge TBM extraction hole in North Beach. To no avail. Apparently fearful that its financially shaky house of cards will collapse, the SFMTA has consistently refused to answer the question or even discuss the subject. Yet the absurd $80 + million plan, which the SFMTA insists is needed to save two TBM’s worth a total of $4.5 million, plows ahead. As a result, North Beach and in particular the affected residents and businesses near the construction site have already experienced construction noise, falling debris and other effects…with the digging yet to come.

For this and other reasons the SFMTA now acknowledges the project contingency reserve, once ballyhooed as being $330 million, is now mostly gone. The latest figures show the reserve as having dropped to around $50 million or 3% the cost of the project (far below the federal government’s requirement of 10%) with much difficult construction work yet to come.

According to a risk management analysis completed by the Federal Transportation Administration and SFMTA March of 2010, the project appears destined to go significantly over budget. The FTA/SFMTA report concluded that the project had only a 30% chance of staying within its $1.58 billion budget and only an 80% chance of holding the overruns to less $400 million. Under federal rules, the local sponsors of New Starts projects pay for all overruns. Which means that the San Francisco tax payer could be saddled with paying for extra Central Subway project costs of $400 million or more. This is a risk that should be – but apparently isn’t – of concern to all of San Francisco’s elected officials.

More about SFMTA’s incursion into North Beach

Here is a chronology of the events that have led up to the current debacle.

June 2012: SFMTA announces plans to tear up the heart of North Beach by extending its tunnels 2,000 feet north of the Chinatown terminal station, allegedly because of a need for a suitable site from which to extract two tunnel boring machines (TBM’s). This causes a firestorm of opposition from North Beach merchants and residents, furious over the idea of digging a 42 foot deep, 45 by 49 foot hole in the middle of Columbus Avenue.

September, 2012: SFMTA thinks better of the Columbus Avenue idea and instead proposes to pull its TBMs out of the ground at the privately-owned Pagoda Theater site on Powell Street near Filbert. Negotiations with the private property owner ensue.

February 15, 2013: The SFMTA announces that the shift to the Pagoda site would increase the overall cost of the Central Subway project by $9.15 million….money it says it would divert from Muni’s already overburdened operating budget. (The cost of the shift has since climbed to $13.7 million and is destined to rise still further). In view of a project contingency reserve that the SFMTA has at various times put between $150 million and $330 million, it is not clear why the cost of the Pagoda shift should come from Muni operating funds rather than Project funds. Here are two possible explanations:

a.) The contingency reserve has already been used up.

b.) The Feds won’t play ball because they now realize that extending the tunnels 2,100 feet beyond the Chinatown terminal has nothing to do with TBM extraction and everything to do with someone’s dream of a future Phase 3 * extension to Fisherman’s Wharf).

* Phase 3 is a fantasy. An extension to Fisherman’s Wharf was not described or even mentioned in the Central Subway EIS/EIR. No local, regional, State or federal agency has approved it or provided any funding for it. Since Muni already provides ample bus and rail service to Fisherman’s Wharf, there is no discernable reason for giving this pet idea precedence over Muni’s many other pressing capital needs.

April 28, 2013: As indicated, despite its growing lack of credibility, the SFMTA continues to claim that digging a big hole in North Beach is the only way of recovering its TBM’s. If the SFMTA were to “get real”, by removing or otherwise disposing of its TBM’s in the conventional manner, it could save the project at least eighty million dollars, with absolutely no loss of subway functionality.

Nevertheless the SFMTA is pushing ahead with its TBM extraction plans, undermining important environmental safeguards and running roughshod over affected businesses and nearby residents in the process. EIS’s and EIR’s are supposed to ensure that the environmental impacts of a proposed project are carefully and accurately described and evaluated before construction begins. By proceeding into an unknown, unapproved and unfunded Phase 3, all in the name of TBM extraction, the SFMTA is making a mockery of NEPA and CEQA regulations and guidelines.

Charts Showing SFMTA’s False Central Subway Claims

Charts, developed from the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s (SFMTA’s) own data, compare Central Subway ridership, costs and trip times. The charts show clearly how the SFMTA was telling the Fed one thing and San Franciscans another.

At least one pending action against the California High Speed Rail Authority would deny the Central Subway project $61.3 million in State Proposition 1A high speed rail funding.

In September 2012 an action was filed by a North Beach resident. In this case the plaintiff charged that the reasons stated in the EIR for pushing the subway 2,000 feet beyond the Chinatown terminal into North Beach were bogus.
Despite its merit, the lawsuit was thrown out on technical grounds.

SaveMuni.com’s Union Square Action: A separate action filed by SaveMuni in October challenged the SFMTA’s right to extend a Central Subway station into a public park (Union Square), without the approval of the voters, as required under SF City Charter Section 4.113. While this action also showed legal promise, the case was blocked by a City Attorney demurrer upheld by the Superior Court Judge assigned to the case. Because of a lack of funds it was not possible to appeal the ruling.

SaveMuni’s North Beach Action: On February 5, 2013, a letter from Lippe Gaffney and Wagner LLP, SaveMuni.com’s attorneys, was delivered to the SFMTA. The letter raised substantive concerns and legal objections to the SFMTA’s plan to extract its tunnel boring machines (TBM’s) at the recently-selected Pagoda Theater site, located on Powell Street near Filbert. For a variety of reasons, including potential geotechnical and ground water problems, potential ground subsidence, threatened historic structures and threatened incursions into public parks, SaveMuni.com believes that before disrupting and otherwise affecting North Beach in order to extract its TBM’s, the City should prepare and certify a subsequent or supplemental Environmental Impact Report. The funds needed to pursue this valid case also appear to be lacking.

Congressman McClintock Blasts the “Subway to Nowhere”
Congressman McClintock’s very forceful and effective statement was a key factor in the US House of Representatives 235 to 186 vote to deny all federal New Starts funding to the Central Subway project.

House Denies Funding to Central Subway

June 29, 2012: Congressman Tom McClintock’s Amendment denying all federal funds to the Central Subway boondoggle passes the U.S. House of Representatives 235 to 186. (The amendment was later sidelined by the Democratically-controlled Senate).

Characterizes the Central Subway as “a case study in government incompetence and wasted taxpayer money”
View Editorial in PDF format
Or read at the Wall Street Journal Online

Sierra Club Opposes Central Subway

May 7, 2011: Reversing its previous position of neutrality, the Sierra Club’s Bay Chapter calls for all unspent Central Subway funds to be put to better use on other Muni improvement projects. Central_Subway_resolution.pdf

Quentin Kopp Skewers Central Subway

July 16, 2011 and October 23, 2012: Retired Superior Court Judge and former California High Speed Rail Authority Chair Quentin Kopp blasts the project Download and in an Examiner Op Ed piece: “True Facts on the Central Subway”

Aaron Peskin Weighs in

August 23, 2011: Former SF Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin announces his strong opposition to the Central Subway, which he notes was sold to him and other supervisors based upon understated costs and overstated ridership. See SF Weekly Article

Jake McGoldrick Blasts the Project

August 18, 2011: Jake McGoldrick, former Chair, SF County Transportation Authority, comes out swinging against the project, which he also characterizes as having been sold on false pretenses. See SF Chronicle Op Ed piece

Market/Mission Disconnect: From the Union Square Station, Central Subway riders attempting to reach a Market Street subway train would be obliged to travel on foot the distance of 4 football fields placed end to end to make their connections. Similar walks would be required to transfer to the Mission Street buses. Even getting to a Market Street bus would be substantially less convenient than it is today.

Today’s Stockton bus riders can easily transfer to Muni LRV lines J, K, L, N, M, F and T and to Muni east-west bus lines 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 9L, 10, 12, 14, 14L, 14x, 21, 31, 71, 71L and 76. With the Central Subway, connections to every one of these 24 east-west Muni lines, as well as to four BART lines and the Mission Street SamTrans buses would be substantially less convenient from the subway than from the buses currently operating on Stockton Street. In addition, most Central Subway riders would experience longer total trip times via subway than via today’s Stockton Street buses.

Note: To help pay for the subway, the SFMTA plans to cut service on the 30 and 45 trolley bus lines by 50%.

Fails to Serve Anyone Much North of Jackson Street

Because the Central Subway stops at the Washington Street terminal it does nothing to accommodate the outlying riders of the 8x, 30 and 45 bus lines. For this reason it fails to serve not only the northern two-thirds of Chinatown but also Muni riders from the Cow Hollow, Presidio, Marina, Buena Vista, Fort Mason, Polk Gulch, Russian Hill, Telegraph Hill, and North Beach neighborhoods.

Unnecessarily deep tunnels and stations require long escalator rides. When the escalators go out of service as they often do, it means either a slooooow elevator ride or long treks up and down stairs.

A mezzaine level, not required for a low ridership line like the Central Subway, unnecessarily pushes up construction costs.

Has Limited Future Carrying Capacity (updated September 17 2014)

To save money, the LRV platforms were reduced to two-car lengths (potentially expandable to three). Short platforms serve only short trains, ruling out a higher capacity operation in the future.

Fails to Meet the Challenge

If the eastern San Francisco’s north-south transportation system had been laid out and designed properly, Muni riders would have traveled unfettered by traffic congestion from one
end of San Francisco to the other on fast buses or trains. Connections to the BART and Muni Metro subway systems would have been quick and easy. Chinatown would have been served by two stations, one near the #1 bus line; the other near the #10 and #12 bus lines. Stations would have been conveniently located just below street grade. A well designed system could have provide much better transit service at much lower cost than the cost of the Central Subway.

In the place of what could have been San Francisco will eventually be saddled with a deep and enormously expensive short subway projected to carry only a small fraction of what city subways normally carry.

The SFMTA’s Central Subway is fatally flawed. Here are five of them:

1.) By ending at Washington Street, the proposed subway would be of little use to anyone living north of that point. Today, the Muni’s 30 and 45 electric bus lines serve riders traveling to and from Chinatown, North Beach, Telegraph Hill, Russian Hill, Polk Gulch, Fisherman’s Wharf, Union Street, Cow Hollow, the Marina District and the Presidio of San Francisco. All of these riders bound for points north of about Jackson Street would be obliged to continue using buses that would continue to bog down in heavy surface traffic, particularly along Stockton Street.

2.) By failing to serve all or even most riders of the 30 and 45 lines, the MTA’s plan would make it impossible to reduce bus operations sufficiently to cover the extra cost of the subway operation. As a result the MTA would be obliged to operate both a very expensive subway deep underground and a substantial surface bus operation; thereby digging the Muni’s fiscal hole even deeper than it already is.

3.) Because of extra walking and waiting times, most subway users will experience trip times actually longer than the trip times of today’s surface buses. For more information on this subject see: “Perceived Travel Times”

4.) By rerouting the T-Line from its alignment along the Embarcadero and Market Street Subway to Chinatown, the project would disconnect riders from Mission Bay, Dogpatch, Bayview-Hunters Point, Little Hollywood and Visitation Valley and the rest of southeast San Francisco from the Market Street Subway. Those with Market Street or Market Street subway destinations would ride the Central Subway past Market to a new Union Square station, and then backtrack on foot a substantial distance to Market Street or the Powell Street Station.

5.) Because of the depth of the subway, the short distance between the Washington and Union Square Stations and the extra walking and waiting time required to use the subway, most people, especially if they are transferring to any of the east-west Muni lines crossing Stockton and Fourth Streets, will find riding the subway less convenient than today’s bus trip. Having to walk several blocks to a subway station at Washington Street, then descend seven stories to the subway platform, then riding the subway less than half mile to Union Square, then ascending to mezzanine level and then walking an additional 1,000 feet to a BART or Muni Metro LRV platform is not likely to attract many riders. In addition, transfers from the subway to most of Muni’s east-west bus lines would be longer and less convenient from the subway than from the buses now operating along Stockton Street. The SFMTA likes to call its Central Subway the Chinatown Subway. Yet according to the SFMTA’s own EIR/EIS, once the first blush of newness has worn off, only 10% of the riders of the Muni 8x, 30 and 45 bus lines riders will bother to use the Central Subway.

Neglected Alternatives

Chinatown needed and deserved a reliable and expeditious connection to downtown San Francisco, as did the rest of northeastern San Francisco. Here are some of the neglected alternative ways of achieving that objective:

a.) Some of Muni’s No. 30 and 45 electric buses as well as the T-line light-rail vehicles could have used the subway. Buses could have come to grade through portals located north of Broadway. This would have enabled the rest of Chinatown and residents of the nine neighbohoods to the North of Chinatown to benefit from the subway. If the bus lines had been extended southward, Mission Bay and Potrero Hill could also have benefited.

b.) The subway could have been shallow instead of deep. Going shallow without the mezzanines would have allowed both an efficient Market Street station and two well-located Chinatown stations. Locating the subway over rather than under the Market Street subway lines would have improved access for riders, allowed for longer stations, better electric bus accommodation at much lower cost.

c.) To cut costs, buses or light-rail vehicles could have operated in a median of Fourth Street until they crossed Mission Street, at which point the transit vehicles could have proceed in a shallow subway under Market and Union Square to Chinatown.

d.) By speeding up bus loading and by reconfiguring Stockton and its nearby streets in a manner designed to improve bus flow, calm traffic and make things easier for pedestrians, Muni’s surface bus operation could have been (and in fact still can be) significantly improved.

e.) Implementing a congestion pricing system for San Francisco could also have been given greater attention.

None of these alternatives was adequately addressed, either in the Central Subway EIR/EIS or in public discussions. For more information on this subject see “Better Alternatives”.

The original idea was to please a Chinatown power broker unhappy at the prospect of losing the Embarcadero Freeway. The plan was to give her a subway to Chinatown. Unfortunately things didn’t work out. Here is an overview of what went wrong.

For starters the project was too costly. Way too costly. In fact at $1.58 billion for a mile of subway and a half mile of surface line, the Central Subway, if actually built, would become one of the most absurdly over-priced short stretches of rail line in the entire world.

“If they build the Subway, it will ensure major major new development at the stops in Chinatown and North Beach, and in terms of scale, these neighborhoods will never be the same again.”
– Allan B. Jacobs, former San Francisco Planning Director and former Dean of UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design

“I’ve seen a lot of large capital projects and a lot of transit projects planned,” he said. “And I’d say this is one of the worst-planned I’ve seen.”– Tom Radulovich, BART Board Member (From SF Examiner)

“How many other subway runs have only three stops? It’s a very short run. It’s pretty silly.”
– Howard Strassner, Sierra Club Transportation Expert(more…)

….This SFMTA selling campaign persisted actively for over 5 years until after construction was well under way in the Fall of 2013. SFMTA spokespeople were particularly brazen and irresponsible in their characterizations of capital and operating costs (grossly understated), ridership projections (more than double what the EIR/EIS stated), trip times (bore no relation to the facts) and “minimal construction impact “(patently false).

San Francisco is a special city. What makes it special is hard to boil down to a few words but it has to do with the hills, the clear air, the Bridges, the surrounding Bay, the parks, the street patterns, the alleys, the intimate, pedestrian-oriented nature of its architecture, the variety and vibrancy of its 60,000 small businesses and its general vitality. This also makes it vulnerable. You can’t just stick something big in the middle of San Francisco and hope things will come out right.

For this reason San Franciscans have often been called upon to stop the short-sighted and foolish schemes of self-serving individuals and its City government. Fortunately, putting the brakes on City Hall has become a time-honored San Francisco practice, responsible for the timely and welcome demise of many destructive public and private ventures. For San Francisco’s past successes in this regard READ HERE.

In the case of the Central Subway, San Francisco’s government went off the deep end.

At first the idea of extending the Muni’s Third Street light rail line northward into Chinatown sounded right. After all, why not? Transportation along traffic-clogged Stockton Street had always been difficult and so why not extend the Third Street light rail line northward along Fourth Street and then under Market and Stockton Street to Chinatown?

Had the subway been planned and laid out correctly it could have worked. But the project soon went off the rails. First came the decision to settle on a single alternative in violation of the bona fide alternative analysis required by CEQA. Soon afterwards it was decided to route the extension under rather than over the Market Street subways. This required a very deep tunnel under Market Street, thereby making it impossible to place a station at Market Street as required to provide an efficient transfer between the Central Subway and the Market Street subway lines. For this reason a hapless rider from Chinatown bound for say, UC Med. will board a Central Subway train at the Washington Street terminal station, then ride a light rail vehicle a half mile, and then be obliged to travel on foot the distance of four football fields placed end to end in order to connect to the N-Line (or any other BART or Muni Metro train).
In part because of the unnecessarily deep subway costs have soared, from the $647 million listed in the November, 2003 Voter’s Handbook, to $700 million in 2004, to the current published cost of $1,580 million and eventually….to who’s know’s what. To hold down costs the effectiveness of Chinatown transportation transit service was further undermined by:

Eliminating one of the two stations needed in Chinatown,
Constricting future subway capacity by foreshortening the length of the Moscone, Union Square and Chiniatown Stations.
Removing 35,000 bus hours a year from the Muni’s No. 30 and 45 bus lines,
Deleting the moving pedestrian ramps that would have facilitated connections the Union Square and Powell Stations,
Failing to improve the grossly inadequate bus service on the surface of Stockton Street,
Arbitrarily truncating the subway at Washington Street.

Thanks to these mistakes and omissions the Central Subway will miss connections with 25 of the 30 east-west transit lines it crosses including all the trains and buses on and under Market, and all the east-west buses on Mission, Post, Sutter, Sacramento, Clay and Pacific.

San Francisco Architect Zach Redington Stewart eloquently sums up the problem as follows: “San Francisco Mayor Sunny Jim Rolph and his engineer MM O’Shaughnessey created one of the greatest municipal transportation systems in the world. Today Muni carries 700,000 riders a day in this small city and serves the giant collection of small businesses that form the backbone of the San Francisco’s economy. But now Muni is being threatened with strangulation by a gaggle of opportunists pushing a tiny, badly-engineered subway that will serve virtually no one and wreck Chinatown’s Stockton Street, including one of the GREAT farmers markets on the West Coast”

For more on the background of the Central Subway project check the box on the upper left side of this page.

Beginning in 2005 a number of better ways of addressing the transportation problems of northeast San Francisco have been proposed, some of which are described below. The SFMTA, the sponsor of the Central Subway Project, has steadfastly dismissed these alternatives without serious consideration.

Alternative I – Surface Solutions: Many people think that the bus service on Stockton Street could be improved sufficiently to make the construction of a subway unnecesary. With the San Francisco County Transportation Authority now studying the feasibility of charging motorists to drive on congested streets (as is done in London, Stockholm, Munich, Singapore and elsewhere), surface solutions are worthy of serioius consideration. Unfortunately, the SFMTA rejected any and all consideration of surface solutions without adequate consideration by the SFMTA on grounds that they were without merit.

Expensive subways should save their users time. But with the Central Subway, a rider’s perceived trip times would actually increase over those experienced by today’s bus riders. The bar graphs demonstrate the perceived time differences of four typical trips: